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Lawless Latvia provides information about Latvian crimes that are ignored by the corrupt media and authorities. Latvia is the offshore banking center for the former Soviet Union, to the detriment of everyone in the world including Latvians and excluding only a few Oligarchs. The EBRD, EU, IMF, and World Bank are making the problem worse by funding the Oligarchs, fraudulently in the case of the EBRD. Please like or friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Learn more about this site »

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LawlessLatvia has been alerted of yet another massive EBRD fraud crime against the people of the European Union and for the benefit of Vladimir Putin. The link below is a European Commission Eurostat report dated 23 April 2018 and it seems that nobody noticed the report when it was published. Either that or corruption prevented this fraud revelation from appearing in the media.

As a quick review of earlier events: (1) a whistleblower gave details to EY that Parex Bank was a pyramid fraud in 2004 and EY refused to act, (2) the same whistleblower gave the pyramid fraud info to Latvian officials in 2005 who also refused to act, and Parex chased the whistleblower out of Latvia with murder threats, (3) PM Godmanis gave a pile of money to Parex in 2008 and lied that he was saving Latvia from the United States, (4) PM Dombrovskis gave a pile of money to Parex in 2009 and lied that he was saving Latvia from Sweden, (5) meanwhile more and more evidence confirmed that Parex was a pyramid fraud and was looted by Putin’s Tambovskaya Mafia.

The EBRD got involved in 2009, joining a criminal conspiracy with PM Dombrovskis to trick Latvian people that Parex wasn’t looted by the Mafia and to assist his disinformation campaign to blame Sweden. The EBRD announced that it bought shares in Parex because they were valuable, however later the fake investment was reversed and we discovered that actually Dombrovskis paid the EBRD to pretend to buy the shares.

Now, with this new absurd report from Eurostat, we can confirm what we have suspected all along – the Citadele privatization to the EBRD in 2010 was also completely fake! And, this second cover-up fraud is still continuing now in 2018! It was another fraud designed to dupe and rob Latvian citizens and creditors. And once again, Eurostat knows about it however is doing nothing to stop it! The only people who benefit are puppet Dombrovskis and his masters from Putin’s Oligarchy.

In this report, Eurostat and EY admit that they know that the EBRD didn’t really buy Citadele shares from Latvia, but instead Latvia is paying the EBRD to pretend to own shares presumably to dupe Citadele creditors and counterparties, especially its correspondent banks. The 2010 Citadele Bank annual report states that the EBRD paid 35 million euros to purchase shares and this 2018 Eurostat report says Latvia secretly agreed to pay the EBRD 88 million euros to pretend to buy those shares. Latvian taxpayers will get robbed of 53 million euros. Of course the secret reversal wasn’t mentioned in the Citadele annual report because it is an illegal fraud.

This brings up many interesting possibilities for future economic disasters in Latvia. When Parex was split into ‘good bank’ Citadele and ‘bad bank’ Reverta back in 2010, the government said that 50% of Parex assets were bad and would go to the bad bank. That was a big change from 2009 government and EBRD statements that the Parex assets were good.

We knew that at least some of the supposedly ‘good’ assets that went to Citadele were criminal, fraudulent, and therefore ‘bad.’ For example, Parex made loans to Rigas Satiksme that funded bribery by Solaris and Daimler that was revealed in the US v Daimler case. And, Parex made loans to Latvenergo that funded bribery by Alstom that was revealed in the Switzerland v Alstom case. Rigas Satiksme and Latvenergo have no obligation to repay these loans, however haven’t repudiated the debts so far because of the government policy of covering-up rather than prosecuting corruption.

Now we must wonder – were any of the Parex assets really ‘good’? Since nobody would buy shares in Citadele, and Latvia had to pay the EBRD to pretend to buy that bank, perhaps Citadele was already looted at inception? And, what about the Ripplewood investors from the USA? Were they duped and robbed by Latvia and the EBRD? Did Latvia lie to Ripplewood that the EBRD invested even though the EBRD didn’t really invest? Or, maybe Ripplewood is part of the scam? Maybe Latvia also secretly paid Ripplewood to pretend to invest to make the bank seem ‘American’ even though its function is still offshore banking for Russia and Ukraine provided by the same money launderers who cleaned out Parex?

2018 was an excellent year for articles about the still-continuing Latvia-EBRD fraud racket which costs society billions every year. We counted 23 articles published by 14 publishers in 7 countries. Unfortunately it still isn’t enough because there has been zero reaction from Latvian authorities and EBRD staff who are still pretending to be unaware of the whistleblowing against them. Hopefully we will smash the racket in 2019! We have pdf backups of all articles in case any links go down.

9 January 2018 Mold-Street (Moldova) – new LatviavEBRD video announced

Vienotiba Party (formerly Jaunais Laiks and now Jauna Vienotiba) has worked hard since the 2005 Parex Bank whistleblowing to establish itself as Vladimir Putin’s favourite party in Latvia. While spreading false propaganda about being pro-EU and pro-NATO, the party has run a fraud and disinformation campaign to help Kremlin-linked bankers loot billions of euros from Latvian taxpayers. We hope voters know the old saying ‘actions speak louder than words.’

Gatis Eglitis is a candidate for Saeima on the Riga list (people who vote outside Latvia will be counted for the Riga list). We recommend Riga list voters should select the Jauna Konservativa Partija (JKP) and mark a plus next to Eglitis.

Eglitis made a post on Facebook on 17 August 2018 with a public statement that the Parex bailout was a heist, not a rescue. This made him the first Latvian Saeima candidate to say the truth about Parex. Parex was the money launderer for Putin’s Tambovskaya Mafia.

Now, in the video below, Eglitis exposes that the Vienotiba-OIK-Latvenergo scam is also linked to Putin, through Putin’s notorious Gunvor company which skims money in corrupt oil and gas deals.

Think of Ukraine. More corrupt than Latvia? Maybe not. When undeclared insider loans caused Ukraine’s Privatbank to collapse, the government commenced a lawsuit against PWC to recover $3 billion.

In Latvia, the government could have sued EY for $1 or $2 billion for the Parex collapse. A whistleblower handed information about undeclared insider loans to EY a few years earlier and those same loans were some of the worst assets at Parex.

EY then ‘audited’ both Parex and ABLV’s annual reports for 2008 which was the year when the government transferred money to Parex to help a lot of Parex clients withdraw their deposits and re-deposit the money at ABLV. Maybe some assets or equity was also shifted around, who knows?

But here is the crazy new story – EY has been appointed to audit the liquidation of ABLV! Latvia isn’t suing EY and instead is giving them access to billions more dollars!

Corruption in Latvia has reached a point where it is just a game between the corrupt bankers and corrupt administrators to divide up loot, while regulators and prosecutors do nothing and pretend they don’t know what is happening. Anyone interested in investing here? Ha ha. Certainly not us, until the EU or US helps Latvia to arrest the perpetrators and put them in jail.

You can’t read about the largest fraud racket in Eastern Europe in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, Bloomberg, Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, or Washington Post. They refuse to publish articles about EBRD support for Vladimir Putin’s money launderers. However now you can read about it in Baltic Rim Economies! BRE is a publication of the Pan-European Institute at the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku in Finland. Thanks for publishing!

The Society for Baltic Security ‘SBS’ held its Annual International Conference on April 27 and 28. The conference was titled ‘Society. Person. Security – 2018’ and was sponsored by Riga Stradins University and Baltic International Academy. Exiled whistleblower John Christmas made a presentation at the conference by video.

The conference marked the first time a truthful and public discussion was held in Latvia about the Latvian Financial Crisis which began in 2008 when the government transferred a quarter of the national budget to Parex Bank. Earlier conferences organized by other groups censored two key aspects of the Parex bailout: there was an ignored whistleblowing three years before and the privatization to the EBRD was fraudulent.

Washington lobbyist Paul Manafort is in the headlines because a US Grand Jury charged him with ‘Conspiracy against the United States.’ He accepted fees from Oligarch Deripaska and President Yanukovich for helping them to steal billions of dollars from millions of poor people, thus destabilizing Ukraine.

When will a US Grand Jury charge Washington lobbyist Sally Painter? She accepted fees from Parex Bank and ABLV Bank for helping them steal billions of dollars from millions of poor people, thus destabilizing Latvia. Some of the dirty money from Ukraine also went through these banks, so she helped destabilize Ukraine also.

While Vladimir Putin’s Tambovskaya Mafia ran money through Parex, Painter was working to convince the US government to ignore whistleblower information that Parex was a money launderer and a pyramid fraud.

When the pyramid fraud collapsed, thus proving she was a liar, she didn’t slow down at all. Painter moved from Parex to ABLV along with other key Parex employees and many shell company bank accounts.

Luckily for Latvia and Ukraine, the US Treasury finally decided to ignore Painter. US Treasury officials saw that ABLV was exactly the same as the old Parex and therefore FinCEN blacklisted ABLV.

Hopefully, the nightmare is over. However we wonder: (1) how many billions of dollars were stolen from Latvians and Ukrainians because of Painter’s efforts? (2) how much did she get paid for that?

The Media has missed a larger story however. What is going on at the European Central Bank (ECB)???

After the bailout of Parex Bank, which has been confirmed fraudulent, guess who started buying Latvian bonds? The ECB did! The ECB had full knowledge that the Parex bailout was a fraud and that therefore Latvia was also a fraud, and at the same time became the biggest ‘investor’ in the fraudulent bonds issued by Latvia.

And, to make matters even worse, the ECB allowed Latvia to enter the euro currency with full knowledge that Latvia was a fraud.

Now this week we can add two new embarrassments. Everyone in Latvia has known for many years that Parex used to and ABLV still does launder Russian Mafia money. But somehow the ECB doesn’t know, even though the ECB is the regulator for ABLV. How can two million Latvians know something however the regulator doesn’t?

Also, the ECB must know that Rimsevics is corrupt and working in the interests of Parex and ABLV. For example, after Rimsevics organized the fraudulent Parex bailout, he was caught by whistleblower ‘Neo’ paying a large secret bonus for himself using the small bit of Latvian taxpayer money that hadn’t already been stolen. And then, prosecution commenced against ‘Neo’ instead of against Rimsevics, at the request of ABLV.

Rimsevics is on the council of the ECB, making important decisions for all of Europe. And somehow the ECB doesn’t know he is corrupt? The ‘Neo’ information has been in the newspapers for years. We have been sending letters to the ECB for years and they never woke up.

The fact that the US had to take action against ABLV because the ECB was sound asleep is a huge embarrassment to the Europe and especially the ECB and we hope the Media will publicize this problem.

The US Treasury has released a list of key people in the Putin Regime which has been dubbed the ‘Putin Mafia List’ by the Media. These are people who are likely to be sanctioned in the future, particularly if Putin continues military attacks and election interference against other countries.

Some people on the list are connected with Latvia. Not only connected, but apparently controlling the Latvian government.

Oligarchs Petr Aven, Oleg Boyko, Mikhail Fridman, Yuriy Shefler, and Viktor Vekselberg appear to have significant control over the Latvian government through local Oligarchs Valery Kargin and Viktor Krasovitsky. It is openly known that Aven and Fridman discussed purchasing Parex Bank from Kargin and Krasovitsky before half of the assets of Parex disappeared instead. The government says the Parex assets disappeared because of the USA and Sweden however there is no evidence supporting this story. Since Boyko and Shefler were big borrowers for Parex, it’s possible that much of the money went to them. Meanwhile Vekselberg also got involved with Parex regarding a property scam for the State Revenue Service.

Also Oligarchs Arkadiy Rotenberg and Boris Rotenberg appear to have significant control over the Latvian government through local Oligarch Yuri Savitsky. Savitsky is openly known to be former KGB. He is immensely wealthy because the Latvian government gave him a lot of state assets. His bank VEF and Skonto’s Multibanka (also KGB-linked) were sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2005. The Rotenbergs bought Multibanka and re-named it SMP Bank. Then SMP Bank was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2015. Now the bank is renamed Meridian Trade Bank. It’s amazing how a bank can escape sanctions by renaming itself every few years. All of these Oligarchs are involved with the KGB/Gazprom ice hockey team called Dinamo.

So much for the myth still promoted in the Western media that the Latvian government is geopolitically allied with NATO and the EU. Actions speak louder than words and although the Latvian people mostly prefer NATO and the EU it is clear that the government is on Putin’s side.